On the Wings of the Phoenix

The phoenix you are expecting tonight
was just a bird before becoming ashes and dust.
Ashes like me, dust like you.

The phoenix itself was just a bird
and it had to fail to become a story.
That is, if it’s true that death is a story
or if it’s true that death is failure
if it’s true that death is anything at all.
The story of the phoenix tells us
that which can burn always has hope.

The phoenix was just a story, a myth
but in so many retellings it is alive.
Either reborn or never having died.
A life is just a story
and a life remembered sounds like myth
creating the moment and space
to be reborn in many retellings.

They say that which reaches too high
will fall from the sky.
Like the boy or the bird
and the wings that burnt.
But those same stories say
from the flames of the sun
the boy Icarus became an ocean;
the phoenix bird never died.

The hero you is just a myth with a thousand faces
retelling the story that anything can fly.

You are mainly water
but there’s hope --
you can still burn



originally digitized 2008 May 3
edits on 2008 May 12
read at Rebirth, part of the Cathedral Arts Festival 2008